‘Back to the Future’: A Perfect Trilogy for Writerly Study
What are some of the things screenwriters should look at when examining this trilogy? Let’s take a look.
Back to the Future is one of those films that screenwriters hail as a Swiss watch. There is no amount of fat on the screenplay produced by director Robert Zemeckis and his co-writer Bob Gale. Granted, earlier iterations of the screenplay were a mess—I mean, can you imagine how the movie would have worked with a refrigerator for a time machine instead of a DeLorean?—but the final product was nothing short of a masterpiece. There is not a single inch of wasted space in the final product. Every frame of film, every line of dialogue spoken, is layered with double meanings that change depending on the context of your understanding of past, present, and future.
It’s the rare comedy that gets funnier the more you watch it because of the knowledge gained in repeat viewings. There’s a reason it’s a classic, studied by screenwriters religiously for close to 40 years. (40? Great Scott!)
The saga revolves around Marty McFly and his friend Doc Brown, both played to perfection by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd respectively. Doc Brown has invented a time machine and the pair of them spend the next three films dealing with the unintended consequences of such an invention.
The first film is often hailed as a masterpiece. The last two-thirds of the trilogy, however, aren’t always as well-studied but, in reviewing them again, I think that might be a mistake. Although four years separated the production of the original film and its two sequels, which were shot back-to-back, the two sequels to the original film pick up the exact moment the first film ends. And, essentially, it’s almost the same spot the second film ends, too, where the key moment of Doc sending Marty back to the future in 1955 becomes an important flux point in the space-time continuum.
What are some of the things screenwriters should look at when examining this trilogy? Let’s take a look.
Wasting no lines
There are lines of dialogue scattered through the trilogy that feel very pertinent to the status quo, but have great relevance the more you watch and rewatch the movies. On first glance, they practically seem to be superlatives or throwaways, but everything finds its way into being important.
As one example, in the first ten minutes of the first installment of the trilogy, Principal Strickland (James Tolkan) busts Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) for being late. They get into a verbal sparring match and it ends with Strickland informing Marty that “No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.”
Watching the first film disconnected from the second two, the line feels like nothing more than an insult. Zemeckis and Gale almost surely picked it up to elevate as they conceived the second two films, bringing the history of the McFly’s as quiet, uninvolved immigrants into the 1885 iterations of Hill Valley, as well as the McFly’s being unremarkable in the future as well—at least since Marty’s accident.
There’s also a role played by folks seeking donations in the first two films that help set Marty’s mind spinning in the direction of the plot. These might seem obvious in retrospect because we’ve seen the movies a hundred times, but watch them as though you’re a first-time viewer and they’re actually quite elegantly placed.
In the first film, a woman approaches him looking for money to save the clock tower and she hands Marty a flyer. Marty is completely disinterested in her because she’s interrupted his kiss with Jennifer—in the first film, that’s Claudia Wells. In the sequels, it’s Elisabeth Shue. The screenwriters add significance to the lines by having Jennifer write her phone number on the back of the flyer with a note for Marty, ensuring he’ll have it to take to the past with all the information he needs for Doc to send him back to his own time.
In the sequel, Charles Fleischer takes on the same role, soliciting money for the clock tower as well, but a news report distracts both he and Marty about the results of the World Series where the Cubs finally won in 2015. (The movie was one year off in that prediction, they actually won in 2016.)
These ordinary encounters with what could be mere extras offer the story more gravitas, context, and importance. As you’re working on your screenplay, look to see where you can add these moments that feel natural, but actually add to the greater story overall.
Setups and Payoffs
The Back to the Future movies are practically second to none when it comes to setups and payoffs, even small ones. Even the first scene of the saga opens with a variety of setups that don’t exactly look like they’re setting up anything in particular.
Reminiscent of the opening shots of Rear Window that introduce us to Jimmy Stewart’s L.B. Jefferies, the camera pans along a Rube Goldberg machine in the garage of Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), but it’s clearly been a long time since anyone tended to it. The toast has been burnt over and over again, the coffee pot is missing, Einstein’s food is rotting in place, and a television turns on with no one to watch it. It’s hard to remember on first viewing that the news report is actually all about the stolen plutonium that Doc Brown stole from Libyan terrorists. Clocks hang everywhere (we’ll talk more about the symbolism of that later) and Marty lets himself in. He rolls his skateboard right into a nuclear case and manages to destroy the scientist’s amplifier before taking a phone call.
This establishes so much of the trajectory of the film and Doc Brown’s character. His experiments don’t work. He’s been gone for a long time. He has a dog named Einstein. He may or may not have stolen the plutonium. His clocks are also slow, which he lets Marty know on the phone.
Marty is also fragile when it comes to rejection and acceptance. This is something that in the first movie echoes the personality of his father and appears to end there. George McFly (Crispin Glover), overcomes this in the idealized version of 1985 and leads a better life for his family. But when Jennifer sees Marty’s future in 2015, he still hasn’t learned this lesson. When anyone calls him out for being afraid, or being chicken, or being a yellow-belly, Marty acquiesces. He’s easily goaded into doing whatever stupid thing he knows is against his better judgment.
Tie that to the scene near the beginning of Back to the Future Part II where Marty shows off his shooting skills at an arcade machine inside the Café ‘80s, he reveals that he’s a crack shot. The kid (a very young Elijah Wood) informs Marty that if he has to use his hands, it’s a baby’s toy and deflates Marty’s ego once more.
But in the third film, set in the old west, Marty’s shooting acumen comes in handy when a traveling Colt salesman asks him to try his tin shooting alley. Marty is still a crack shot and we’re led to believe that this is how Marty is going to solve his problems with Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen. They sow the seeds of this misdirect for the entire saga until something else entirely has to happen.
Think about other setups and payoffs through the saga. You’re acclimated to the time period by the construction signs outside the various developments of Hill Valley. Signs for mayoral candidates root you in jokes and time.
In Back to the Future Part II, Marty seeing his father’s grave presages the moment in Part III where he sees Doc’s grave. In the same pattern, Marty’s acumen with Biff’s ashtray is a setup for his accuracy with a Frisbie pie plate when he hurls each at various members of the Tannen family.
My favorite might be Marty turning off a screening of a Clint Eastwood film as Biff watches from his hot tub, just after he’s revealed his secret bullet proof vest. When Marty needs to defeat Biff’s ancestor in 1885, he uses the same trick and has even adopted the name Clint Eastwood.
Challenging Characters
The meta challenge for Doc Brown and Marty is clear: they need to make the world a better place with their travels through time, if at all, not a worse one. And they work very hard to do that, but challenges in their character stand in their way and they are forced to take parallel, but in some ways opposite, journeys.
Marty starts as an emotional hothead. He’s willing to jump into fights, he thinks with his emotions and not with his head, and doesn’t really have a mind for science or intellect. Doc Brown, on the other hand, is completely divorced from emotion and his heart, instead relying solely on his intellect and voluminous vocabulary.
The stories progress through the trilogy (which takes place over, essentially, a couple of weeks) and we learn that these are the character traits that will prove to be the downfall of each of them. Doc’s inability to think with his heart will change everyone’s future and lead to his death, Marty’s inability to think with his brain and eschew absurd challenges will lead to his death and end his future, too. Both of them need to learn from each other in order to become whole people and it’s played to such wonderful effect, gradually through the course of the films. They are confronted over and over again with their flaws, and given chances at self-reflection in order to correct them when it counts the most, preserving their futures.
Symbolism and Repetition
The last, most important thing to pay attention to in the Back to the Future trilogy is the use of symbolism and motifs. Clocks are everywhere, writ large from the very opening shot of the first film. The clock tower’s face plays an important role across all three films, whether it’s during its construction in 1885, when it’s hit by lightning in 1955, its inert state in 1985, or its updated status in 2015. You’ll notice them in small moments, too.
Take, for instance, the moment where Marty goes into Lou’s cafe in 1955 and his watch beeps at him when he’s in the phone booth. He realizes digital watches haven’t been invented yet and has to hide the time from Mr. Caruthers. Think about how they figure into the scenes with Buford Tannen threatening to execute Doc Brown in the street, literally throwing a pocket-watch representing time at Doc as he goes to face off against Marty.
Tardiness and being on time is another theme throughout the saga, particularly for Marty. Marty is chronically late, Doc Brown is chronically punctual. They have a reversal of those roles at the end of the movies on the train, where Marty is exactly where he’s supposed to be and Doc Brown—thinking with his heart—is instead saving Clara (Mary Steenburgen).
Repetition in the imagery plays a vital part in the structure of each movie as well. In each installment, Marty loses consciousness and is awoken by a character played by Lea Thompson, either his own mother, Lorraine, or his ancestor, Maggie. It creates something familiar to allow Marty to emote and feel safe for a moment, always a respite before a tense laugh in the script and a turn in the story. It creates a rhythm for the audience to become accustomed to.
Conclusion
In my view, these are three of the most finely scripted and orchestrated films ever made. Time travel is a topic difficult enough to sell and do properly in a movie as it is, so the fact that these screenplays are so meticulous and entertaining is a testament to Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale.
The biggest lesson of Back to the Future, though, is keep iterating on your idea; always refine it to make it better. Zemeckis and Gale could have stopped after their first draft and said it was good enough, but it wasn’t. They could have stopped after their third draft of the screenplay, but they didn’t. Then, when Robert Zemeckis cast Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly and spent five weeks shooting, he could have powered forward and just finished the film, but he still wasn’t satisfied.
In a moment he describes as painful, he fired Stoltz after that five weeks and hired Michael J. Fox to step in. All because that’s what the story needed.
In the end, these three films are hailed as classics. For screenwriters and filmmakers in particular, there’s a lot to be learned. Watch them again, study them, and we’ll see you back in time…
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Bryan Young is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and author. He's written and produced documentary and narrative feature films and has published multiple novels and a non-fiction book. He's written for Huffington Post, Syfy, /Film, and others. He's also done work in the Star Wars and Robotech universes. You can reach him on Twitter @Swankmotron or by visiting his website: swankmotron.com.
